Minimum time per move please

@Awum said in #49:

In the game that triggered my original post, I was in a winning position, or at least one that was I unlikely to lose. My opponent was clever enough to see that he could waste time rather than try to win, but he had 1/2 a second left on the clock, while I still had plenty. He ultra-super- time-stoppingly flagged and took the win.
I'm sorry but this doesn't make sense to me. You say you had plenty of time - and yet you lost on time. So why exactly do you blame your opponent and zero time premoves? As I already said in comment #30: if I have enough time to finish the game, I don't have to care how fast my opponent plays, only my time matters. (Sure, it's convenient if I can also do some thinking on my opponent's time but that's not exactly what bullet is about.)

Yes, I find it dishonest to play a losing position with the only intention to win on time (without trying to win or draw by chess means). But I see absolutely no difference whether it's done with normal moves, premoves or zero time premoves. And my solution is to play time controls where the risk of this happening is sufficiently reduced.

You can chain premoves on chess,com

Different sites use various methods to implement premoves. Chess,com uses premoves which take 0.1 second, but you can chain premoves. In lichess premoves take 0 seconds, but you cannot chain premoves.
On chess,com, premoving is hard if you lag. You will lose more than 0.1 second, which is unfair.

You can always play with 1/2 second(s) increment if you dislike the premove system used by lichess.

@StephenPS said in #52:

You can chain premoves on chess,com

Different sites use various methods to implement premoves. Chess,com uses premoves which take 0.1 second, but you can chain premoves. In lichess premoves take 0 seconds, but you cannot chain premoves.
On chess,com, premoving is hard if you lag. You will lose more than 0.1 second, which is unfair.

You can always play with 1/2 second(s) increment if you dislike the premove system used by lichess.

@mkubecek said in #51:

I'm sorry but this doesn't make sense to me. You say you had plenty of time - and yet you lost on time. So why exactly do you blame your opponent and zero time premoves? As I already said in comment #30: if I have enough time to finish the game, I don't have to care how fast my opponent plays, only my time matters. (Sure, it's convenient if I can also do some thinking on my opponent's time but that's not exactly what bullet is about.)

Yes, I find it dishonest to play a losing position with the only intention to win on time (without trying to win or draw by chess means). But I see absolutely no difference whether it's done with normal moves, premoves or zero time premoves. And my solution is to play time controls where the risk of this happening is sufficiently reduced.

Opponent did 20+ flagging moves in a tenth of a second clock time (19 of them used zero), while the same number of moves (yes premoves) cost me over six seconds. I’m not sure what you think of as a “winning position” but suffice to say, when it’s a time control game, reducing your player to very little time with no hoping of finding a win on the board would be considered by many a “winning position.” Top pro players do it all the time.
With no time control, the game probably would have been a draw.

If I had the same access to my opponent’s speed I’d have no cause for complaint re: fairness, I understand that. And the assumption that this is due to poor connection at my end is just that — an assumption.

Imagine two players playing chess in separate rooms at the end of a long hallway, each with an animal. One is a tortoise, the other is a hare. They each play by giving their move to their animal who is trained to take the move to a midway point between the two of them where the animal instantaneously hands the move to the opponent’s animal, who then takes the move back to his player. The clock sits at the midway point, switching over on each handoff as chess clocks do. To keep it “fair”, time is subtracted off the clock to account for the time the slower animal uses.

Which animal should you choose? A: for premoves, the tortoise. The two of you of course have the same time between moves [2H + 2T] but you are credited time [2(T-H)] shortening what is used on your end of the clock. If it shortens the time sufficiently, your move is treated as having arrived before your opponent moved. It doesn’t matter if the two of you are responding to the prior move each time, but it is a fiction when both players are completing their moves prior to the return of their animal.

It’s counter intuitive, but based on lag compensation as Lichess describes it, the player with the slower connection has longer to consider their premoves, and has a better chance of having their move considered to have arrived prior to their opponent.

I have essentially arrived at the same solution as you — to avoid time controls where I may be at a disadvantage and won’t enjoy the play.

It won’t change my opinion of the situation, which I think devalues some of the “wins” collected by players of these games. I’m also making the point because I see others losing these games and perhaps not fully understanding that they can’t make the same number of moves as their opponent because of time credited to their opponent’s clock.

And for the record, telling someone “don’t play it if you don’t like it” doesn’t really add anything to the discussion. Of course don’t play if you don’t like it.

Sometimes I feel like chess players are way too used to being the smartest person in the room. As a result, we don’t always notice that we are treating smart people as if they are stupid, and then wonder why they don’t like it. You can be smart and wrong (and I may be both) without having missed the obvious idea that you ought not do things that are no fun.

I try to be curious when people hold different opinions from me. They may have a point I haven’t considered, even if I won’t (god forbid) change my mind every time.

Peace, y’all. Good chess to you!

I tried. I failed. I resign.